The present invention relates to a control element or actuator with at least one elastic expansion element as an internal part that can be connected, via an attachment, to a pressurized fluid source and/or a vacuum source, which permits pressurization or evacuation of a cavity in the expansion element.
Control elements of this kind are used in a wide variety of fields. For example, pneumatic actuators are used in automation technology or also for other fields in which a control function is intended to be performed by activation of such a control element in response to a control signal that is triggered manually or automatically.
Besides the known control elements, which generally work according to the cylinder/piston principle, the document EP 1 865 208 A2 has also already disclosed a deflection element in which a cushion acts on a predefined support structure and deflects the latter in a specific manner under pressurization. The support structure is generally a joint structure, at the desired deflection sites of which one or more cushions are arranged in order to effect the desired change of shape of the support structure. A disadvantage of such a solution is that, for each application, a special support structure has to be provided on which differently configured cushions then have to be arranged in order to produce the functional safety. This entails considerable production outlay, since the flexible supports and the cushions each have to be constructed for the particular purpose and linked to each other. The object of the present invention is to make available a control element that can be used universally.